Bureau Of Prisons Seeking To Criminalize Social Media Access By Inmates

I guess being incarcerated isn’t dehumanizing enough. Being treated like barely sentient meat deserving of any abuse perpetrated by guards or other inmates just isn’t enough oppression, apparently.

This country talks a big game about rehabilitation and “paying your debt to society,” but when it comes to the day-to-day business of incarcerating people at a rate that exceeds most totalitarian states, the supposed leader of the free world treats millions of US citizens as sub-humans unworthy of even basic niceties.

Everything has a literal cost attached to it and whatever communications prisons allow comes with a huge price attached. Per minute costs for phone calls far exceed what’s charged by even the most monopolistic phone service provider. Every bit of entertainment is similarly exorbitantly priced, even when inmates are using services that are free to use on the outside.

Rights are necessarily diminished when serving time, but what few rights are still there to be exercised are in constant threat of being further restricted. The privilege of being allowed to remotely interact with people who aren’t fellow prisoners is now on the chopping block, thanks to a new proposal from the federal government’s Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

A proposed change to U.S. federal prison rules that would punish inmates for using social media or directing others to do so on their behalf could infringe on the free speech rights of people who advocate for incarcerated people, activists say.

Civil liberties advocates are facing a Monday deadline to push the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to back away from the proposed change, included in a planned overhaul of its disciplinary rules for the more than 155,000 inmates in its custody.

Federal inmates are already banned from using cell phones and are restricted from accessing the Internet.

While a separate part of the BOP’s plan would also make it an infraction to use social media to commit a crime, the bureau does not explain why it wants to punish inmates over the use of social media more broadly.

The commenting period for the proposal closed April 1. Fortunately, this doesn’t mean the BOP is free to move ahead with expanded criminalization of social media use. But even though the BOP told Reuters it has not moved forward with expanded restrictions, the proposal makes it clear the BOP isn’t all that interested in compromise with those opposed to this effort.

It offers a small parade of horribles its presents as evidence that all use must be restricted and/or subjected to increased penalties because some prisoners abuse the privilege.

If the prison facility acquiesced upon discovering that an inmate’s Facebook account was being operated to convey content from the inmate himself, it would open the door to inmates communicating with a virtually unlimited number of individuals. Those Facebook contacts could include other confined inmates, gang members with whom the inmate may be affiliated with and prohibited from contacting, or perhaps more disturbingly victims of the inmate’s crimes or other individuals who may be subject to deliberate intimidation by the inmate (or by the inmate’s contact who controls the account, harassing the victim in effective anonymity). The uncontroverted evidence indicates that administrators have determined, in their sound discretion, that permitting inmates to maintain Facebook accounts through third parties would jeopardize the security and order of the facility and would circumvent established policies regulating communication that enhance prison security…

That conflicts with the earlier part of the proposal, where the BOP states it simply wants to increase the severity level of punishment if social media access is used to commit criminal acts or encourage others outside of the prison to carry out criminal acts on inmates’ behalf.

And that would be fine, considering prisons not only monitor internet use, but also have complete control over it. Lots of stuff that might be linked to criminal activity is already subject to existing rules. But the paragraph above suggests inmates should not be allowed access at all because some access by some prisoners might be linked to criminal acts. The example posted by the BOP itself simply says it has a problem with social media use that might “convey content from the inmate himself.”

That’s not going to fly under the First Amendment, even the very limited version of this right that can be exercised by federal inmates. For now, the proposal is still just a proposal. But, given what’s written here, there can be little doubt the BOP intends to move forward with this, no matter what inmates, their loved ones, and civil rights groups have to say about it.